Rod McLaren: Words that work

24 August 2026 (The file burning stove, 2009) To du list is a single-page to-do list for people at the centre of the office-productivity/Marcel Duchamp Venn diagram (hi, both of you).

21 July 2026 The word “doctor” meant “teacher” in Latin.

18 July 2026 ISAs are getting more complicated - here’s what is changing.

1 July 2026 AI is good at making everyone sound competent and polished.

19 June 2026 The UK gov has published the 2026 carbon emission conversion factors.

12 June 2026 Notes from a Sustainable AI seminar by Professor Chris Preist on 10 June 2026, part of a series of events on responsible AI by ClimateAction.tech with ustwo.

12 May 2026, updated 21 May 2026 to add market-based scope 2 numbers from Octopus (reduced my headline emissions by 1,405 kgCO2e) and 10 Sep 2026 to add a note about avoided emissions and correct some minor errors.

10 December 2025 A pal asked about companies with UK freelancer/contractor talent networks or search-for-a-contractor-role, so here’s a list.

5 December 2025, updated 16 June 2026 (Hand pointing to the left with 3 fingers with nonsensical labels, by Google Gemini) Present 3 things.

11 November 2025 Last month I looked at UK data centre efficiency, through the lens of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) 1.

28 October 2025, updated 12 November 2025 If a petrol car was as efficient as a data centre, you could drive 3,000 km or more before needing to fuel up, like New York to Los Angeles, or London to Kyiv and back.

13 October 2025 What are grid operators, UK Gov and industry saying about future electricity demand for data centre hosting?

8 October 2025 In October 2025 Which?

1 September 2025, updated 19 September 2025 Woodrow Wilson, 1908: “government is not a machine, but a living thing.

24 August 2025, updated 25 August 2025 The big AI platforms are starting to disclose some energy and resource use and emissions.

8 August 2025 Mistral published Our contribution to a global environmental standard for AI, a “first-of-its-kind comprehensive study to quantify the environmental impacts of our LLMs”.

4 August 2025 Amazon had 1.5 million employees at the end of 2024.

27 June 2025 “If we have data, let’s look at data.

17 June 2025 Last week’s AI emissions news: Very bad: xAI data centre methane emissions - regulatory loopholes let x.AI run methane-burning generators to power their data centres.

17 June 2025, updated 23 June 2025 I joined a really good workshop on Estimating digital carbon emissions by Chris Adams and Katrin Fritsch of the Green Web Foundation last week.

10 June 2025, updated 19 June 2026 Update: 2026 numbers are here.

29 May 2025 Change at scale is hard.

8 May 2025, updated 11 June 2025 Can the big AIs tell you what their carbon emissions are?

25 April 2025, updated 11 Jun 2025 Carbon.txt is a service by the Green Web Foundation which lets you declare your organisation’s sustainability data in way that software can read.

4 April 2025 Infinigate/KnowBe4’s corporate security training is quite poetic. 00:00:09 Because remember—as an employee, 00:00:11 you serve as a human firewall for your organisation. 00:00:23 So be a hero. 00:01:15 Hasty clicks are dangerous clicks. 00:01…

27 March 2025 Ripple Energy is in administration, but the windfarm co-ops its platform helped set up are still running.

16 March 2025 2 screenshots of my pension transfer in progress (Vanguard) and complete (InvestEngine).

10 March 2025 Anna and I wrote a Checksies about whether you should act urgently to beat a deadline for making manual topups to your state pension.

6 March 2025 Both of these energy experiments sound really useful.

20 February 2025 Content style guides that are written for every audience (because government’s audience tends to be all of its citizens), or have some universal application because they’re written for no particular organisation or audience: GOV.UK several

27 January 2025 More wind means more energy, except when the wind farm equipment must be protected or the grid balanced.